The National Labour Commission (NLC) has directed the Technical University Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) to call off its strike.
The Commission said the government would be working to migrate their qualified members to the single spine pay structure and pay them their allowances by January 29.
This order was reached on Friday after the Commission met with representatives of TUTAG, Ministries of Finance, Education, Employment and Labour Relations, Fair Wages and Salaries Commission and the Controller and Accountant ‘s General’s Department on the way forward to resolve the current impasse.
NLC says the union must go back to the lecture halls as the government works to migrate their qualified members to the Single Spine Salary Structure and pay what is due them by January 29.
In a four-point directive, the NLC also assured that TUTAG members in institutions that have submitted or yet to submit their data to the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) will be paid their allowances as required.
“The Commission also directs that with this intervention, TUTAG shall call off the strike with immediate effect and return to work”, the statement said.
TUTAG declared an indefinite strike on January 6, 2020, in protest of the non-payment of allowances due its members following the conversion of polytechnics to technical universities.
The association was upset that the government did not comply with an earlier ruling by the NLC to ensure that members of the association started receiving allowances due them from December 2019, January 2020 and February 2020.
Speaking to the press on Friday, the Chairman of the Greater Accra branch of TUTAG, Dr Ibrahim Zubairu said there will be a further meeting with the leadership of TUTAG “to decide the way forward” following this development.
He however assured that TUTAG has “taken the ruling and we are going to go back to abide by it.”
In addition, Dr. Zubairu refuted suggestions that their strike lacked merit.
He stressed that the government had also been given a directive to abide by.
“The commission has given government a new timeline to enforce the earlier decision the commission made on 28th October 2019… the new timeline is that by 29th of January 2020, the government should pay us our salaries together with public university allowances.”
More directives from NLC:
1. That six (6) out of the eight (8) Technical Universities who submitted their data to the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE_) will be paid their salaries together with the allowances 29th January 2020.
2. That the two technical Universities (Sunyani and Tamale) who are yet to submit their data should do so latest by 17th January 2020 to enable the government to pay their salaries and allowances at the end of February 2020.
3. The Commission also directs that with this intervention, the TUTAG shall call off their strike with immediate effect and return to work.
4. The parties are strongly advised to continue negotiation on the outstanding issues in good faith.
Past strikes
The Association embarked on a sit-down strike in October 2019 in protest of the non-payment of allowances for about three weeks.
Technical Universities Administrators Association of Ghana (TUAAG) also joined the strike demanding full benefits of migration onto the public universities’ salary structure.
The students bore the brunt of the strike as they were left stranded when academic work was halted.
On Friday, December 27, 2019, TUTAG declared an immediate resumption of its suspended strike after initially calling off the strike started in October.
But the December 27 strike was called off after about six hours.
